History of Photographers 11 & 12

Edward Curtis

Edward Curtis is most known for his photographs of Native Americans and the American old West. He built his own camera when he first became interested in photography and used it for quite some time before purchasing a professional camera. He started  his own studio with a few of his close friends/colleagues.President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to photograph his children after he saw that Curtis won a photo contest. He had many studios in his lifetime, he left his first one and started a new partnership with someone else and soon left that one for his own self appointed studio in California. The photographs he is most known for taking are portrait style photographs of Native Americans.

This photo called "A Smokey Day at the Sugar Bowl" is my favorite photo by Edward Curtis. It's different from the photos he usually takes, its not a straightforward portrait, it's a beautiful scenic photo. It still sticks to his style of the old west and Native Americans because of the Native standing by the river. I think this gives the photo and even better effect because of the man standing and looking off into the distance, it gives the photo an eerie effect, but not in a creepy way, more like a cold feeling like you are actually there in the early morning fog on the river.

This is defiantly one of my favorite photos by Curtis.The view in the photo is astonishing and the men on horseback add to the effect of the vast empty space that the old west was. Whenever you watch movies where the setting is the Old West you almost always have a shot like this. When you think Old West in your head the image of horseback riders and a tall canyon immediately comes to mind.

  

This is an original portrait called "White Man Runs Him" by Edward Curtis. This is a typical straightforward portrait that Curtis was known for taking. I like portraits because they show the true person in the photo, no interpretation. It's just a person, facing the camera and being this close to the camera they can't hide anything. The camera reveals them and that's what I like. There is no smoke and mirrors, everything is legitimate.

Gertrude Kasebier

Gertrude Kasebier was an American photographer who shocked the world with her amazing pictures of motherhood, Native Americans and her fierce belief that woman could take beautiful photographs. Her unhappy marriage inspired some of her most famous masterpieces. She believed that photography was made for women with artistic taste and made it one of her most important goals, to make sure that every women would be able to be a photographer if they wanted to. 

 

This is a photo taken by Gertrude Kasebier titled "Miss N" and it is one of my favorites. There is a mysterious quality to this photograph that one simply cannot put their finger on. It's because of the look on Miss N's face that Kasebier captured; it can be interpreted many different ways. One could say that she was told a joke and smiled slightly, or maybe she's thinking a bittersweet memory, the reason behind the sadness in her eyes. That's what makes a photo great, the story it creates. 

 

This photo called "Blessed Thou Art" has a chilling quality about it. The way the child looks, dressed all in black when everything around is white and bright. Perhaps the reason the child is seen as a darker figure is because Kasebier did not like her husband, and felt the children were a piece of him. She constantly stresses the bond between mother and child so maybe the picture shows that even though the child has a bit of evil in it, it is still her child and she still loves her. 

Once again in this picture "The Clarence White Family in Maine" the mother and children are seen to have a noticeable connection. In the white light the mother looks almost like a holy figure and the boys are entranced by her. Kasebier was very influenced by the connection that a mother has with her children and this shows in many of her photographs including this one. 

Mike Carroll - Hand Held

Mike Carol was a fantastic photographer and this is shown in his movie "Hand Held" about his time in Romania and the experiences he had there. He has taken many photographs of the orphans there and many of these photos showed Americans for the first time what the conditions were like in Romania for an orphan child. Back when Carroll visited the orphanages the conditions were horrific. Baby's were lined up in metal cribs, nameless and forgotten. No human interaction went on between the workers and the babies because of the get of them growing to attatched. The orphanages were a nightmare, the children were lucky to survive them at all.


Today in Romania the orphanages have come a long way since then. The children live in much better conditions and adoptions have increased dramatically since the revolution. Children now are dressed in clothes and have much more human interaction than before. Still the human interaction isn't the best but it is a big improvement from before. The children in the orphanages are also getting to experience foster homes which they didn't have a chance to before. There are also a lot less orphans because women are not forced to have five children anymore. Many Romanian families adopt children and give them loving homes.

 

History of Photographers 9 & 10

Eduard J. Steichen

Eduard J. Steichen was an American photographer who immigrated to the United States from Luxembourg with his parents when he was a small child. He was a well known photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair Magazines. He was first interested in drawing and painting and gradually opened up to the idea of photography and bought his first camera. Some of his photography friends and him eventually formed a group called  Milwaukee Art Students League and hosted lectures about art. His most famous photograph is "The Pond- Moonlight" which is shown below.

This may be Steichen's most famous photographs but it is not one of my favorites. The composition is too dark for my liking and though the reflection is clear in the pond the edges are blurry and dark. This photo doesn't appeal to me, it's too dark and dreary. 

This photo called "Isadora Duncan in the Parthenon, Athens" is my favorite by Steichen. I like that you can see the detail of the posts beside her, the grittiness of them. I also like how she blends into her background, the only light in this picture. I like that he caught the shadows of the pillars on the ground in front of her and that you can see the light between them. 

This photo is titled "Experiment" and I have mixed feelings about this photo. I like the different colors that have been exposed in the photo but I don't like the gritty quality of the photo. It makes the photo look more like a painting than a photo and I don't like that, I think he should differentiate between his painting masterpieces and his photography masterpieces. His shouldn't incorporate that much of his other skill into his photography. I enjoy the color but the clarity could have been clearer. 

Walker Evans

Walker Evans is most famous for his photos that document the Great Depression. He is known for using wide format for all his photos. He took photos for the Farm Security Administration for quite a while after he campaigned for the Resettlement Administration. Evans stayed with three different families and took photos of them during the Great Depression and it was published in the famous book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

I like this photo by Evans because of the bright quality it gives especially on the house. Everything else is shadowed beside the main house, making it the subject of this photo, and it makes the house look even better. The contrast between the dark and light is especially important in black and white photos (at least to me it is) and this photo tells me that he took the time to find where the light was and how it would affect his photograph as a whole. 

I like this image by Walker Evans as well. This is from his well known collection, Subway. I like this because although there are two adults in this photo the child is the main focus of the photo. The woman's face is shielded by a newspaper and the man's face is only somewhat in the frame. It's interesting how he noticed this and took the picture. The child's face is also the brightest and we can see the whole face. It's almost as if Evans is saying that children have nothing to hide, but some adults do.

I like this photo because the image is distorted, yet it still remains to be a beautiful photo. You can see reflections on the glass and this blocks our view of the men eating lunch but it doesn't ruin the photo. The reflective surface merely adds to the illusion of the photograph. I like it also because its a simple photograph. It's just two men eating lunch and one of the looks like he is in the middle of a conversation. Yet the simplicity of the scene merely adds to the somehow glamorous effect the photo gives. 

Near and Far Pre Assignment

I'm looking forward to starting this assignment because after researching Ansel Adams I fell in love with his work. I like his landscape photos and I look forward to taking some of my own. Gloucester has so beautiful geography and this is a great opportunity to find a landscape and photograph it. I'm sure I'll have a lot of photos of the ocean for this assignment!It's also interesting to learn what parts of the camera help you take a successful landscape photo and I look forward to referring to the videos posted on the main blog in case I need help.

Shutter Speed Self Assessment

4. I like that my images came out pretty well (though I am not impressed by my third image of the coin) while the subjects were in the air. I like that my photos show that I understood the assignment and tried my best to succeed. I liked that this assignment was a challenge and that I was able to succeed and take some good photos.

5. On the first two photos of this assignment I had no problem because I used the professional camera available to us in class. When I was taking photo's of spinning coins I had my own Cannon camera which is not as professional as the ones used before (it's a small digital camera). Taking the photos was harder using my camera and I wasn't able to focus as well. Next time I'll be sure to use the cameras in class or try harder in learning about my camera and how I can use it to do assignments involving shutter speed.

6. To improve my images I could has focused the camera more (especially the coin one) and had it not so blurry. Once again it was difficult using my own camera to do this assignment. Next time I will defiantly be more careful with focusing on the subject of the photo.

Of Anna and Eve

Once I saw the post about  Viktoria Sorochinski on the main photo blog I immediately became entranced by her work. Her photos depict the mother, Anna, in more of a childlike way and the daughter, Eve, in a motherly way. Almost as if Sorochinski has switched the roles of the two girls to get across a deeper meaning. The expressions the girls have in almost all the photos caught my attention as well. One of the girls always has a blank expression on her face, a dumbfounded look. The other usually has a stern look on her face except for one photo when Anna is smiling a sad smile. These photos inspired me because of the emotional depth that Sorochinski puts in her photos, especially as an amateur photographer. I hope that in the future I can take photos that express so much more than shown in the photo.

These are a couple of my favorite photographs taken by  Viktoria Sorochinski.

These photos are not mine they were taken from http://www.photoawards.com/en/Pages/Gallery/zoomwin.php?eid=8-42830-12&count=4&code=

History of Photographers 7 & 8

Eadweard Muybridge

Muybridge was an English photographer who was known for his pioneering work and his work in motion picture projection. He focused mostly on taking photos of open spaces and landscapes unless something architectural caught his eye. He liked using time lapse photography (taking pictures of things over time and seeing how they changed) such as building going up or being torn down. He also studied a lot of horses and how to photograph them but this came to a halt when Muybridge found out his wife was cheating on him and Muybridge murdered the man she slept with. He was acquitted on the claim "justifiable homicide." When Muybridge returned to England later in his life he died of prostate cancer.

This photo is called "Bridge of the Puerto Bello, Panama"When I was looking for photos to use by Muybridge I gravitated more towards his landscape photos than his time lapse photography. I like this photo a lot because of the dark color contrast of the picture and then the light reflection of the underneath of the bridge on the river. Without the river and the reflection this photo would look a bit creepier but the reflection gives it a very pioneer-ish look that sticks out to me. 

This photo is called "Yosemite" and this is another very genuine Muybridge photo. Just looking at this photo you can tell it screams pioneer and old west and that's what I love about it. It looks like a photo out of a history book. Even if he didn't realize it then, by taking these landscape photos he was still taking time lapse photos at the same time because now a days not a lot of places still look like this today. Capturing a moment so pure as the old west, uninhabited by humans the land never touched before, it's beautiful. 

 

This photo is called "The Ramparts, Funnel Hole, Hole in the Wall, Pyramid Sugar Loaf, Oil House and Landing Cove of Fisherman's Bay." This photo is very gloomy and gives off an aura of industrial revolution. It's different from his other landscape photos, it doesn't have that same pure energy of nature, instead it has workers tearing up the land and urbanizing it. I have mixed feelings about this image because I like the point he was making by taking this photo but I don't like the dark, dreariness the photo has. 

 Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis was a Danish American and a former muckraker journalist and a documentary photographer. Riis loved taking photos of impoverished New Yorkers and was one of the first to use flash photography in order to take photos in darker places as he so wanted. Riis photographed the slums of New York and got some of his most famous photos from these adventures. 

This photo is called "Bandit's Roost" and is one of my favorites by Jacob Riis. I like how it shows just how gloomy and dark the slums of New York are and his photo doesn't glamorize anything. He really brought to light the bad side of new York without having it be a bad photo; he still manages to get good shots in difficult working conditions.

I like this photograph because once again Riis doesn't try to glamorize the poor life of the people of New York. I also like this photo because of the contrast between the white blanket the baby is covered in and the grey of everything else around it. It almost represents how the baby is still innocent of the world and doesn't know suffering like the child holding it.



I like this image because of the emotion it portrays. You can literally feel what these children are feeling because of the emotion portrayed on their faces in this photo. You can see the sadness and how they are struggling and it is a great moment that Riis was able to capture.

Shutter Speed Priority Pre Assignment

Learning to control the shutter speed on a camera can help you take great photographs when things are still moving. I am looking forward to this assignment because it is such a challenge to take clear photos when a subject is still moving. It is especially challenging to make the background blur while the main subject of the photo is not blurry. I'm looking forward to this challenge and hope to take some great photos!

Get Close Self Assessment

2. I evaluated my photos by choosing the ones I thought best fit the assignment. I tried to make sure I picked the best out of the lot of photos I took. These stood out to me because the rose, clearly the subject of the photo, was very clear and stands out from such a close angle. It made the picture even better once it was changed to black and white and the rose was completely the center of attention. I was looking to make the rose the center of the photo without literally centering it. I tried angling myself and the camera so that it focused mostly on the rose without centering it in the photo and this seemed to work for me. 

3. The steps I took to create these photos were pretty simple. I followed the directions about using the flash, I got up close and focused my camera and once I found a subject (the rose) I focused on it from different angles until I felt I had enough pictures to choose from. Then I narrowed my photos down to the best three and edited them in Photoshop. 

4. I like (especially in my first photograph) that the rose is very clear and the background is blurred giving the rose a crystal clear quality. The rose itself was very white even without the black and white editing in Photoshop and this caught my eye in the midst of all the bright colorful photos. I like that my photos pay more attention to the beauty of the rose and that none of the other plants in the photo interfere with that.  

History of Photographers 5 & 6

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer who was considered to be the father of photojournalism. Bresson was originally a painter but became inspired by the art of photography and soon left behind his painting ways and focused fully on photography. His style of photography was based on everyday life and the beauty of that. He liked catching life as it happened in a photograph for he believed that moment would be immortalized forever.

 

This photo titled "Behind the Gare, St. Lazare" is one of my favorites by Cartier-Bresson. I like how you can see the moment he captured through the blurred wheels of the bicycle and the rider himself. I also like the angle of this photo and how you are able to see that he is at the top of a staircase and you can see the curve of the spiral stairs. Even the road curves in this photo, it's as if he was using a fish eye effect. 

This photo is called "Alberto Giacometti, Alesia Street" and is another one of my favorites. I don't know what it is about rain in photos that I like but I find the rain very appealing to the eye. Especially with the simplicity of a man trying to get out of the pouring rain. That makes the whole image completely Cartier-Bresson, it captures everyday life in one glamorous moment. 

"Rue de Cléry" is the name of this photo. I like this photo because it catches a woman in a hurry trying to walk up onto the curb and somehow the picture still has a glamorous quality to it. I think it's because photographers usually photograph very important things, even very sophisticated. Because this moment was captured in a photograph one assumes it is an important moment which gives it more appeal. 

Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron was a well known British photographer. Cameron only spent eleven years on her photography but she still is known as one of the best photographers in the world. The style Cameron tended to lean towards was not appreciated by people of her time. Cameron's main goal in her photography work was to capture the beauty of everything and everyone she photographed. 

  

This photo is simply called, "Annie, my First Success" and i admire this portrait a lot. I like the lighting used and I like how the light is only on the girl's head and face besides the window behind her. The dark contrast of the wall to her right and her coat makes her face stand out more. Cameron has defiantly captured the beauty of this subject.

 

This photo is called "Sadness" and I think the picture clearly depicts the emotion. The angle this photo is taken at show's the girl's sadness in almost a melancholy way. She seems sad, but not a serious sadness more of an innocent sadness that is not truly understood. I like how this photo can show those different sides of sadness and still manage to be beautiful. 

This photo, "Study of Beatrice Cenci" reminds me a lot of the photo above. The same melancholy feeling is felt when looking at this photo as well. I particularly like the lighting in this photo, giving the woman a pale purple glow about her. You notice the light on her face again just like may other of Cameron's pieces. The face I believe is the true subject on the photo and therefore the light must be shown on the face. Unlike other photographers I have researched before Cameron didn't look for beauty in the outside world, she looked for the beauty in people and their faces especially.   

Paul Strand Photo Assignment

Paul Strand Post Assignment Self Assessment

1. During this assignment I learned to look for the light in photos,whether there is a lot of light or barely any at all. I think I did well on these photos and I made sure to take lots of pictures before evening it down to only the few we needed.I focused on finding light without staring into it an potentially damaging the camera. I tried to look for shadows and reflections the light caused. Once I analyzed the photos I took I picked the ones that expressed Paul Strand the most and then edited them in Photoshop.

4. I like how the photos I took came out in the end after I edited them in Photoshop. I like the lighting I used and how the photos look very unique and have a modernist quality to them. The photos were also very clear and the subject was not blurry which makes the pictures look even better.

5. The only part of this assignment I had trouble with was finding the perfect light that didn't flush out the image. It took a while for me to find light that complimented the picture I was taking but once I found the light I had no further problems.

Get Close Pre-Assignment

Getting really close to an object means focusing with your camera on one thing and having everything else blurred out. We are also using flash to make the picture clearer. I'm excited to do this assignment and really learn how to focus on one thing and still make it look very artistic, especially when it is in black and white. I think this assignment should be fun and a good learning experience for future photos I will be taking. We looked at some examples from the photographer Imogene Cunningham (in my previous blog post I talked about her work). Most of her photos are taken from a very close angle and looking at her photos gave us a good example on what this assignment is about. More about Imogene Cunningham can be found in my previous blog post.

Paul Strand Pre-assignment

            Paul Strand was an American photographer who influenced a generation of photographers with his new age  urban photographs. Paul Strand helped bring different styles of photography from Europe to the US which gave him an edge on his knowledge on photography. He was the first person who finally declared that photography is an art. He was a modernist and this helped his photos become different than other photos people were used to seeing. He made people see that photography is a form of art and that a photo is just like a painting only instead of a paintbrush you use a camera.
             To take photos like Paul Strand one has to search for the light. His photos are black and white and usually show different everyday scenes, like downtown Manhattan. His photo's reflect his modernist personality and you must use this to show the essence of Paul Strand in your photographs. Capture the light and capture everyday objects. Most importantly try to capture a bit of Paul Strand's personality in your photos.

History of Photographers 3 & 4

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams is an American photographer mostly known for his black and white photographs of landscapes. He is one of the inventors of the Zone System which allows one to be able to determine a well fit exposure of the final print of their photos. He mostly used large-format cameras. Adams influenced many artists with his use of landscapes and his legacy lives on through many of his admirers.

This photograph is titled "The Tentons and the Snake River." I like looking at this image because of the light that reflects off of the river and the clouds near the mountains that cover the sun. It's a very pretty picture but very simple at the same time. Nothing extraordinary makes this picture pretty, it's simple the beauty that nature reflects and that Adam's happened to catch on his camera. 

This photograph is called "Evening, McDonald Lake, Glacier National Park". This is one of my favorite photos by Ansel Adams. There is so much light in this picture and the water clearly reflects the mountains giving the photo a foggy effect. Adams defiantly captured the essence of beauty in this photo. 

This photograph is called "Moon and  Half Bowl" and is another pone of my favorite photographs done by Ansel Adams. Any photo that has to do with the moon attracts my attention right away, because it's hard to catch the true beauty of the moon, the light that reflects off of it from the sun. Adams has ways of capturing the light in ways that give his photos a magical quality.

Imogene Cunningham 

Cunningham was most famous for her outdoor photographs and her industrial landscapes. Since she was eighteen and first got her very own camera, Cunningham has been taking magnificent photographs. As she developed as an artist she became more interested in taking photos of flowers and plants. For some time Cunningham was also fascinated with human features including hands and faces.

This is a photo of a succulent plant taken by Cunningham. I don't like this picture very much, mainly because the plant doesn't look pretty or appealing to the eye. It looks more like some creature than a plant. The black and white does not flatter the plant and the whole image seems off to me. Maybe this was the point of the photo but I did not enjoy this photograph.

This photo taken by Cunningham is called simply "Dream" and it is dreamlike indeed. The light around the girl makes her look almost ghost-like which makes the photo creepy but intriguing. The black and white compliments the photo making the light parts look more dramatic having a dream essence. I enjoy this photograph a lot.

 

This photo called "Mather and Western" is one of my favorites because the picture can be interpreted in many different ways. The man's face can be thought of as blank, unfeeling or angry and it makes you question what he thinks of this sleeping girl; what is the story behind this photograph? It leaves the person admiring this photo wondering, just what exactly does this photo mean? What is it trying to show us? It has an air of mystery that I admire.